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United States24767 Posts
Usually, part of being a good worker or good manager is to do your job in such a way that others can follow it. What I mean by this is, should you suddenly need to take a leave of absence, others would understand what you were working on and be able to take over for you while you are gone. Of course, the transition won't be as smooth as if you simply stayed and continued your work, but it wouldn't be disastrous.
There are many ways to ensure a smooth handover of your work to others. Aside from briefing your closest counterparts on the daily happenings of your work, you should document as much of your work list as possible, and provide all key information necessary to continue the work. For each project you are working on, any information you had to go out of your way to acquire previously should be saved so others will not need to go hunting for the same information (e.g., if you annually request a new "employee rights and responsibilities training" CD from the federal Department of Labor, you should identify somewhere in writing who your point of contact is, how you get in touch with them to request the CD, and when). Another method of preparing your workplace to receive your work, should the need arise, is to train alternates on specific areas of your responsibilities. Should you need to leave or even get fired, there is a near-expert for each area of your work.
To what extent do employees actually go out of their way to make their work easy to hand off to someone else? I feel like there is a bit of a conflict of interest. As a hypothetical:
Company A needs to lay off either employee #1 or employee #2. They both do work of equal importance, but one will need to take over most of the responsibilities of the other, who will get laid off. Employee 1 carefully documents all of the work he does. Employee 2 keeps everything in his head. It would be easy for Employee 2 to take over Employee 1's work. It would be quite difficult for Employee 1 to take over Employee 2's work (assuming Employee 2 won't take the time to facilitate a proper hand-off of work). The easiest thing to do is lay off Employee 1 since the transition will be much smoother than the alternative. However, we are punishing the employee who did the "right" thing and rewarding the employee who did the "wrong" thing.
To what extent do large companies and organizations promote or require employees to be like Employee 1 rather than Employee 2? To what extent do people like Employee 2 get rewarded today? Is it amoral to purposefully conduct your work like Employee 2 to try to make yourself less replaceable?
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If you read any book on organizational theory, organizational behavior or similar there will no doubt be a chapter on power (especially if it's an American textbook). There it will say that employees seek to make themselves irreplaceable and it's the job of manager and executives to string together an incentive structure which promotes knowledge sharing.
I recommend Morgan or Buelens as text books 
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As for your questions
1: Not enough sadly.
2: Not enough.
3: Yes and No, it depends on your beliefs.
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I work in the restaurant business and I see a lot of people come and go and they all think they are irreplaceable. The irony
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Nowadays anyone is replaceable. And I'd probably fire employee 2. Someone who isn't able to do something as trivial as document his work is a red flag for incompetence. Incompetent workers resort to weak strats like this to cement their place. Competent workers rely on their actual productive output or ability to comingle with the people that matter. Being secretive about your work is pretty shitty to be honest.
As for morals, this isn't a moral question. It's just a question of what is the most effective conduct to keep your position. If you're going to be Machiavellian about your office politics, there are better ways to do it than employee 2. He's being a total nubcake.
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That's a good question for sure.
I'm in a situation were i do ask myself the same over and over again. So far i've learned it depends on your direct supervisor.
Yes, i want to make myself irreplaceable. I don't want to have to fear about my work situation. But after a few years, i (everybody) have to admit, that this kind of 'irreplaceable' work does hurt in the long run. The next question which comes up is; What are the expecations of my supervisor? Do i fullfil his standards? At which degree i become replaceable? Should i take the risk?
I don't know... yet. I'm not experienced enough, and i don't know if i can ever experience this small degree, but what i've learned so far is, what i wrote already. If your boss is a selfish dick, you better be an irreplaceable employee :/
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I think more importantly, by not documenting and carefully annotating work I can produce more output making me seem more productive and competent than an employee doing things carefully. So yeah, employee number 2 is the one to be.
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I have worked in HR for a few different large companies. Almost everybody thinks they are irreplaceable, and when that unfortunate time comes... They are surprised: Everybody is replaceable. Heck, the Oilers won two Cups after dealing Gretzky.
Managers can see your work ethic. They can tell if you are trying to make yourself irreplaceable by keeping things to yourself. And, qualities like that are not very endearing. They see you hiding things, and think: I can't wait to get rid of this jackass.
In the end, work ethic and your relationship with your boss will save your job. Nobody is Irreplaceable.
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My father is in a situation where Employee#2 has infested the company and rather than being seen as a bad thing it is seen as the best thing you can do. He complains about it all the time since it is accompanied by everyone having more work than they can get done in their standard work hours(forced overtime!) and new employees fresh out of college being forced to join the toxic work environment just to get fired later for being employee#1.
My father does his best to be employee#1 while dealing with employee#2's as best he can, although when he comes home he lets out all his frustration and anger… >.<
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I feel like this kind of "knowledge silo" happens alot, but the real damage is caused when entire business groups adopt this sort of philosophy.
For example, I have worked in places where a group would explicitly not share information, obstruct requests for information, and ultimately attempt to control and corridor any flow of knowledge from their group to outside business groups (within the organization). This served as a way to maintain the image that they provided an indispensable business service which could not easily be replaced. Note, not just that they personally couldn't be replaced, but that the entire group, as a unit, couldn't easily be replaced.
This creates obvious major firm inefficiencies, but at the same time, it almost feels like a natural consequence of a rational agent trying to make sure they don't lose their job, but in this case the agent happens to be a group. I work as a database programmer and analyst for a big oil&gas corp, and trying to get other parts of the business to share their information, even when doing so should be in their direct interest, is like pulling teeth. And half the time when I finally get the data (after months of political tank/viking wars), it's a 400mb excel spreadsheet only vaguely maintained. Of course they didn't want to share that - who would want to expose their own incompetence?
Another thing to consider, more directly speaking to your questions, is that if you are a valuable employee who has business-critical knowledge or function, if you don't train other people to do your job (or you obstruct/sabotage any attempts for this to occur), the other consequence aside from your being 'irreplaceable' is that you are unpromotable. For somebody who is ambitious and wants to become management, etc, it is almost necessary that they train others...
An oldie but classic (programming): How to write unmaintainable code
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EPT
